WHO DO THEY THINK THEY’RE KIDDING?
. . . this needs to be a serious industry-wide commitment to providing the
healthier foods parents are looking for at prices they can afford.
~Michelle Obama (1964 – ) Speech to the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (March 2010)
WHAT THE . . . ?
My health club has hung advertisements on the walls of the locker room. (What the . . . ?) I couldn’t help but stop to read because it was for a food product, and there was a coupon for $1 off. Now that might sound like something of value, but the food product was for a 7 oz bowl of oatmeal. I had to ask myself why in the world someone would pay over a dollar for a bowl of oatmeal? Oats are just about one of the least expensive foods out there; you can get a pound of rolled oats for about a buck and a half.
THE LABEL SAYS
Treat yourself to this hearty and delicious blend of four whole grains and real low-fat milk.
Ready to eat or heat it up for a quick and satisfying hot breakfast.
This product –Kozy Shak Ready Grains — has the distinction of having the milk added to the steel-cut oats, brown rice, pearled barley and rolled oats. How’s that for parsing? Counting steel cut oats and rolled oats as two different grains. And are they implying that four whole grains are better than three? Or one?
It really frosts my flakes to see how Big Food mucks up the simplest things. They use refined products (probably the rice is refined) and then add back in chemical nutrients (Vitamins A & D). True to form, they’ve loaded it with refined sugar and dextrose (17 g in their Original flavor, 26 g in the Apple Cinnamon flavor!) and salt (200mg). And, if you read between the lines, they’ve added assorted mukhwa like artificial flavorings (msg, modified food starch and natural flavors – which, when not specified usually means that they are combined with more chemical additives). Hoping to convince consumers that there is value in buying milk combined with the oatmeal, requiring refrigeration actually limits convenience. And here’s a bulletin: it contains eggs! Certainly something unexpected in a bowl of oatmeal.
A BETTER BREAKFAST
I hope that, from reading Stop Blogging & Cook, people will see through the hype on frivolous food products that they can easily make themselves with less cost and increased nutritional value. Hot or cold, oatmeal is something a seven-year-old can make easily with fifty cents worth of ingredients in less than five minutes. There are several preparations for breakfast cereals, cold and hot that include muesili, oatmeal, grits and polenta that you can revisit:
Challenge yourself to come up with your own interesting combination. That’s what cooking is all about! Today’s homework helps you to get into the reading-the-label frame of mind. Necessary for understanding what you’re eating and enables you to make decisions about what you choose to eat. Check it out.
